Thirteen civilians were killed overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday by Russian shelling in east-central Ukraine, which targeted a town near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
The Grad multiple rocket launcher attack mainly targeted the industrial city of Marganets in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It is located on the banks of the Dnieper River opposite the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, the target of last week’s attacks of which Ukraine and Russia accuse each other.
eleven wounded
Two people died of their injuries in hospitals in Marganets, adding to the 11 death toll announced early in the morning on Telegram by the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentin Reznichenko. The village of Vyshchetarasivka, where a woman was killed and a couple injured, was also attacked.
The overnight attack also injured 11 people, five of them seriously. The vast Dnipropetrovsk region is considered relatively safe and is home to many civilians evacuated from Donbass further east, the epicenter of the Russian offensive.
“We spent a horrible night (…) It is very difficult to get the bodies out of the rubble, said Valentin Reznitchenko in his message: I beg you, go to safe places during air alerts (…) Eighty rockets were deliberately launched and insidiously launched in neighborhoods residential while people slept at home.
Crisis around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
The situation has become dangerously tense around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, under the control of Russian troops since March 4, shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The plant has been bombed at least twice since Friday, with Kyiv and Moscow accusing each other of being behind the attacks. One of these attacks on Friday damaged a high-voltage power line, causing the automatic shutdown of one of the three nuclear reactors still operating at the plant (among the initial six).
No independent mission has access to the site and the plant is operated by Ukrainian employees. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considered the information from Zaporijjia “increasingly alarming” on Saturday.
Source: BFM TV
